Classical Casimir interaction in the plane-sphere geometry

Abstract

We study the Casimir interaction in the plane-sphere geometry in the classical limit of high temperatures. In this limit, the finite conductivity of the metallic plates needs to be taken into account. For the Drude model, the classical Casimir interaction is nevertheless found to be independent of the conductivity so that it can be described by a single universal function depending only on the aspect ratio $x=L/R$ where $L$ is the interplate distance and $R$ the sphere radius. This universal function differs from the one found for perfect reflectors and is in principle amenable to experimental tests. The asymptotic approach of the exact result to the Proximity Force Approximation appears to be well fitted by polynomial expansions in $\ln x$.

Updated version with minor modifications and addition of a reference

References in corpus (6)

• Optical properties of gold films and the Casimir force
• Thermal corrections to the Casimir effect
• Casimir energy between a plane and a sphere in electromagnetic vacuum
• Fluctuation induced quantum interactions between compact objects and a plane mirror
• Casimir interaction between plane and spherical metallic surfaces
• Geothermal Casimir phenomena for the sphere-plate and cylinder-plate configurations